Building Resilient Education Systems: Evidence from Large-Scale Randomized Trials in Five Countries

Noam Angrist; Micheal Ainomugisha; Sai Pramod Bathena; Peter Bergman; Colin Crossley; Claire Cullen; Thato Letsomo; Moitshepi Matsheng; Rene Marlon Panti; Shwetlena Sabarwal; Tim Sullivan

doi:10.3386/w31208

Building Resilient Education Systems: Evidence from Large-Scale Randomized Trials in Five Countries

Noam Angrist, Micheal Ainomugisha, Sai Pramod Bathena, Peter Bergman, Colin Crossley, Claire Cullen, Thato Letsomo, Moitshepi Matsheng, Rene Marlon Panti, Shwetlena Sabarwal & Tim Sullivan

Working Paper 31208

DOI 10.3386/w31208

Issue Date May 2023

Revision Date June 2025

Education systems need to withstand frequent shocks, including disease and climate events, which close schools for over 222 million children. During these emergencies, alternative models are needed to deliver education. However, rigorous evaluation of effective educational approaches in these settings is challenging and rare, especially across multiple countries. We present results from five randomized trials in India, Kenya, Nepal, Philippines, and Uganda to evaluate the provision of education in emergency settings. These multi-site coordinated trials enable us to uniquely inform internal and external validity simultaneously. We also test multiple scalable models of remote targeted tutoring instruction, comparing government and NGO delivery. While SMS messages have mixed results, phone call tutorials show consistent effectiveness across diverse settings. We find large and robust effect sizes on learning, with average effects of 0.30- 0.35 standard deviations. These effects are highly cost-effective, delivering up to four years of high-quality instruction per $100 spent. Results also show similar effects when delivered by government teachers as NGO instructors and sustained improvements to teacher beliefs and practices. We further evaluate effects during a government scale-up with 25,000 teachers in India and an additional weather shock in the Philippines. Altogether, our results reveal it is possible to strengthen the resilience of education systems, enabling education provision amidst disruptions, and to deliver cost-effective learning gains across contexts and with governments.

We are grateful to a coalition of partners who enabled this multi-country effort. Implementing & research partners include: Youth Impact, J-PAL, Learning Collider (supported by Schmidt Futures & Citadel), Oxford University, World Bank, Nepal’s Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, Teach for Nepal, Street Child, Philippines Department of Education, IPA, Building Tomorrow, NewGlobe, Alokit, and Global School Leaders. Funders include UBS Optimus Foundation, Mulago Foundation, Douglas B. Marshall Foundation, Echidna Giving, Stavros Niarchos Foundation, Jacobs Foundation, JPAL IGI, Northwestern’s ‘Economics of Nonprofits’ class, the Peter Cundill Foundation, and the World Bank. Cullen received funding from the UKRI GCRF & Oxford’s OPEN Fellowship. We thank Natasha Ahuja, Amy Jung, and Rachel Zhou who provided excellent research assistance. Special thank you to implementation and research teams including Nassreena Baddiri, Mariel Bayangos, Kshitiz Basnet, John Lawrence Carandang, Clotilde de Maricourt, Pratik Ghimire, Faith Karanja, Manoj Karki, Karisha Cruz, Usha Limbu, Roger Masapol, Edward Munyaneza, Sunil Poudel, Karthika Radhakrishnan-Nair, Pratigya Regmi, Uttam Sharma, Swastika Shrestha, and Kishor Subedi. We thank conference participants from ASSA, BREAD, CSAE, NEUDC, PacDev for comments. We thank Michela Carlana, Dean Karlan, and Mike Callen for detailed comments. IRB approval was granted by Nepal’s Health Research Council (776/2020), HML IRB (889OXFD21), and Columbia University IRB (21-384). The trials were registered in the AEA registry: AEARCTR-0009779. For the India scale-up effort, we thank the Karnataka government, J-PAL South Asia, Alokit, the Agency Fund, the What Works Hub for Global Education, the UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) as well as Sophie Ochmann, Rohan Katepallewar, Subash Prabakaran, Kavya Manjunath, Namitha Sadanand, Rijul Grover, Swathi Attavar, & Sharnic Djaker. We dedicate this paper in loving memory to Micheal Ainomugisha. His commitment to evidence and improving children’s lives was unwavering. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.
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Noam Angrist, Micheal Ainomugisha, Sai Pramod Bathena, Peter Bergman, Colin Crossley, Claire Cullen, Thato Letsomo, Moitshepi Matsheng, Rene Marlon Panti, Shwetlena Sabarwal, and Tim Sullivan, "Building Resilient Education Systems: Evidence from Large-Scale Randomized Trials in Five Countries," NBER Working Paper 31208 (2023), https://doi.org/10.3386/w31208.

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- May 3, 2023
- June 18, 2024

Building Resilient Education Systems: Evidence from Large-Scale Randomized Trials in Five Countries

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